Dementia
by liaisonwiththecouch
Summary: [oneshot] Jyscal never ceases to speak.


A/N: There is nothing in the game that provides the basis for this. It's all just the product of my mind.

Seymour idly picked up his staff, turned it this way and that, to catch the light. His father, lurking in a corner of the room, moved forward.

"I gave you that," he said, his voice as clear as when he had been alive.

"I treasure it still," Seymour replied lightly, setting it aside and sitting down at his desk. He reached for a quill and lightly began to write on the wood.

"I taught you not to do that," Jyscal said, sullen as a child. Death had not improved the man, Seymour reflected with a slight feeling of fondness as. It had given Jyscal the air of a child, freeing him from the oppressive need for dignity that accompanied a leader, especially one of the Guado. The quill scratched at the soft wood, imported from Luca, and dragged when it hit the scars of other writing that adorned the reddish black wood.

"And yet you continue," Jyscal continued, the mellow bass of his words interlaced with a whine that did not become a man of his age, much less a dead man. "You always tell me, you need to think. Can you not think on paper? Guadosalam is not so poor we cannot supply you. And you write more than ever."

Jyscal still spoke as if he, not his son, were the lord of Guadosalam, as if he were not dead.

"I have more to think about."

"You do not think. You act. Always, your first reaction is to move."

"My first reaction is not to move. My first action is to think. My thoughts simply move faster than yours."

Jyscal acknowledged that silently. While a good leader, his strategies had always taken time to concoct.

"That is still your downfall," he pressed on, however, when his thoughts returned to rebuke. "You never think. You know—somewhere in you, there is a deep little machina that knows everything, and it simply moves you. But I, who have made treaties with the Al Bhed, know that the knowledge of machina is not infallible. Someday you will fall, and I will still be here because I am Guado, not machine." A smug whine insinuated itself into his voice.

It was an infuriating aspect of the man, Seymour thought gently as the quill scraped the wood, that he could remain fatherly and childish at the same time.

Jyscal, perhaps sulking from being ignored, reluctantly gave in to his curiosity. "What are you thinking about, then, that is so fascinating to you?"

"I am thinking of a new summoner," Seymour said patiently as his departed father moved towards him from the corner.

"There are new summoners every day," his father replied, shrugging superciliously. "I cannot go a day without one arriving to ask my hospitality. They are bred like sewer rats." The last comment was directed at Seymour with a dark glare. "They die like the sewer rats too—an ignoble, pointless death that keeps repeating itself."

My hospitality, not yours, Seymour thought with less rancor than dry amusement. "This is a special summoner," he said, as one would to a child. "This is the Lady Yuna, daughter of Braska. She became a summoner recently, in the temple at Besaid."

"I remember Braska," said Jyscal in whimsical tones. "I met him in the streets of Luca. A polite young man, accompanied by a scowling monk and a drunk who was ill-bred enough to be the illegitimate child of some gutter snipe whore. So this is his daughter, you say? I will meet her soon enough, then."

"Your input, as always, is greatly appreciated."

"So she is the daughter of a great summoner, yes? What else makes her worth notice?"

Seymour smiled gently. "The people appear to love her, which is fairly tiresome; we in Spira are fickle. We will believe she is invulnerable until suddenly some crisis occurs, then she will be only some traveling show and the people will lose interest in her. However, the daughter of such an esteemed summoner should not be forgotten."

"Is she beautiful, then?" Jyscal was still caught in the notion of what made the woman important. "Some great Al Bhed beauty, suntanned by the skies of Besaid?"

"I haven't seen her yet," Seymour said, amused, "though I'm sure she would be lovely. Her mother was a beautiful woman, for all that she was Al Bhed, and Braska was a finely-featured man."

"Do you seek her out, then?" Jyscal's voice was wheedling, and his voice carried a shrill note that perhaps he considered to be cunning.

"I will ask her for her hand in marriage," his son said briskly, ending his sentence on the heavily scarred wood without undue flourishes. "I cannot save Spira without a summoner, and the daughter of another savior would be nicely symbolic."

A barely tangible hand suddenly gripped his shoulder with force that would have been painful, had Seymour been entirely human. He raised an eyebrow and turned to his father.

"I will warn her, and you will die," Jyscal said, suddenly lucid. His eyes were too wide, and the pupils dilated.

"Death comes to us all," Seymour said easily, "and it will."

"I will warn her."

"Then so be it."


End file.
